


Looking Forward

by Nevanna



Category: The Middleman (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-01
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-03-20 16:19:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3656952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevanna/pseuds/Nevanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wendy and Lacey look ahead to their lives after art school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Looking Forward

**Author's Note:**

> This story fills the "College/University/Education" square (my wild card) for Ladies' Bingo 2014-2015.

Wendy stepped back and frowned at the canvas on her easel. When her instructor asked her about it during the next critique, she would need a suitably articulate and profound answer, but none was coming to her now.

“Dub-Dub, that looks so cool!” exclaimed a familiar voice by her elbow. 

Wendy pushed a loose lock of hair out of her face, remembering too late that she’d probably left a streak of teal paint on her forehead. “Hey, Lace. Thanks.”

“I love how the roses kind of change color when you move your head.” Lacey Thornfield swayed back and forth a few times, as if to take in as many of the colors as possible, then linked her arm with Wendy’s. “I,” she announced, “am on a mission.”

“Okay.” Wendy wasn’t even remotely surprised by this statement. “And what’s the aim of this mission?”

“ _You_ , my friend,” Lacey said emphatically. “You’ve been in here since dinner. That was hours ago, and the snack bar’s still open. Come and get a coffee with me. Unless that thing has to be done by tomorrow?”

Wendy shook her head. “The day after.”

“Well, that settles that.”

“Just let me clean up a little here, and I’m all yours.”

The weather was finally warm enough for students to venture outside whenever they could… which tended to be at any hour of the night. On the way to the building that housed the snack bar, Wendy and Lacey passed by a girl with what looked like a glittery unicorn horn attached to her forehead, a young man in a pirate’s hat pedaling a bike with his arms upraised, and a small group gathered on and around a picnic table with guitars, singing what sounded like cartoon theme songs.

There were times when Wendy really loved art school.

She and Lacey ended up carrying their drinks out onto the steps, and falling into conversation about their final projects, endangered species, the guy across the hall from Lacey whose latest masterpiece seemed to involve flinging paint onto his boxer shorts (“Please tell me that he washed them first,” Wendy said), and a subject that was becoming less and less abstract with every passing day: their plans for after graduation.

“My mom keeps dropping hints that I should go back to Miami,” Wendy said, pausing to take a sip from her cup. She wouldn’t go so far as to say that she’d _miss_ the taste of campus coffee, but she didn’t think that she’d ever forget it. “And by ‘dropping hints,’ I mean that she’s already told all of her friends with sons my age that I’m single. How about your parents?”

Lacey looked like she was barely managing not to spit out her tea. “First we have to assume that Dr. Barbara Thornfield, M.D., Ph.D. even knows that I’m graduating, or from where.” Before Wendy could apologize, Lacey continued, “I’m not talking about what our _parents_ want. What do _you_ want?”

“If I had to choose,” Wendy said slowly, “I’d want to do pretty much the same thing that I’ve been doing here: you know, painting whenever I can, and watching zombie movies and playing video games with an awesome group of people in our downtime.” She sighed. “I’d have to find a bearable day job. Then again, I probably wouldn’t be in the middle of nowhere.”

“I’ll never understand why you’re so eager to live in the city. Hello, bad energy all around.”

“I can imagine one of us spending the rest of her life in rural Vermont, and it’s not me,” Wendy said. “Besides, there are a lot of opportunities to make the… ah… energy in most cities better. I’m sure that even a _confrontational spoken-word performance artist_ could find a place to volunteer or people who were willing to protest with her…”

Lacey smiled. “You’re not that much more subtle than your mom, you know.” She stared out over the campus lawn to where it dropped away into the darkness. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t give it a shot . Because everything you just described?” She dropped her head onto Wendy’s shoulder. “If there’s a better future waiting for us, I can’t imagine it right now.”


End file.
